How did Steve Jobs get his first job? How did Stacy, a high school junior, get an interview at Twitter, beating out 99% of all applicants that apply for a job?
Did they attend a career fair? Did they have the best resume in the world? Go to the best schools? Know the “right” people? No.
They picked up the phone (in Steve Job’s case — quite literally) and asked. That’s it. This post goes over the importance of asking and that can actually be an effective strategy to land a job/internship, especially when it’s difficult to stand out.
The reality is that the best jobs in the world are not posted or available at a career fair. Hiring managers care a lot less about your GPA, what school you went to, or what grade you got in compilers, than most people think. Often GPA, school, etc. are just used to filter between a large number applicants, and have very little to do with requirements of the actual job. You often just need a way to stand out.
What impresses a lot of employers, even the ones that do post jobs, is Hustle and creativity. That doesn’t require a high GPA or a name brand school.
For example, this is the email a high school junior sent to Dick Costolo (then CEO of twitter) asking for a job. The high school junior googled to find the CEO’s email address. The email got her noticed, and an interview. That’s further than 99% of applicants get by applying for job through company website.
Hi Mr. Costolo,
My name is Stacy. I understand your time is valuable. I’ll only write three bullet points:
Programming since 7th grade.
Have most experience working in Java/Android. Check my website if have time.
I want to intern for Twitter this summer as a high school senior. How?
Thanks,Stacy
hink about it, if someone emailed you with a nice thoughtful email asking to learn about your company and potentially work there, would you turn them down? I bet most people would actually give that person a shot, much more so than even applying online to company website. I know I would.
Furthermore, what do you have to lose? If the company doesn’t respond, so what? You have nothing to lose — you are not working at the company now anyways :)
In the next post, we’ll show you exactly how to reach out, some email templates on what to write, and some other effective strategies.
Check out www.beehyve.io for more helpful tips, resume reviews, and 1:1 help — all for free!
Btw, here is what Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter responded with:
Stacy,
I like it when people get right to the point!
We do indeed have openings this summer for mobile developers in java/android. [twitter recruiter] is copied here and she runs our intern program.
[twitter recruiter], can you follow-up with Stacy and get his resume etc. for our process this summer?
Thanks Stacy!
Also here is how Steve Jobs got his first job — by cold calling (literally) the founders HP.
- *Names changed for anonymity
- *Original post here